Archive for July, 2008

1.1  What is a Function Pointer?

Function Pointers are pointers, i.e. variables, which point to the address of a function. You must keep in mind, that a running program gets a certain space in the main-memory. Both, the executable compiled program code and the used variables, are put inside this memory. Thus a function in the program code is, like e.g. a character field, nothing else than an address. It is only important how you, or better your compiler/processor, interpret the memory a pointer points to.

1.2  Introductory Example or How to Replace a Switch-Statement

When you want to call a function DoIt() at a certain point called label in your program, you just put the call of the function DoIt() at the point label in your source code. Then you compile your code and every time your program comes up to the point label, your function is called. Everything is ok. But what can you do, if you don’t know at build-time which function has got to be called? What do you do, when you want to decide it at runtime? Maybe you want to use a so called Callback-Function or you want to select one function out of a pool of possible functions. However you can also solve the latter problem using a switch-statement, where you call the functions just like you want it, in the different branches. But there’s still another way: Use a function pointer!

In the following example we regard the task to perform one of the four basic arithmetic operations. The task is first solved using a switch-statement. Then it is shown, how the same can be done using a function pointer. It’s only an example and the task is so easy that I suppose nobody will ever use a function pointer for it

//------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// 1.2 Introductory Example or How to Replace a Switch-Statement
// Task: Perform one of the four basic arithmetic operations specified by the
//       characters '+', '-', '*' or '/'.

// The four arithmetic operations ... one of these functions is selected
// at runtime with a swicth or a function pointer
float Plus    (float a, float b) { return a+b; }
float Minus   (float a, float b) { return a-b; }
float Multiply(float a, float b) { return a*b; }
float Divide  (float a, float b) { return a/b; }

// Solution with a switch-statement - <opCode> specifies which operation to execute
void Switch(float a, float b, char opCode)
{
   float result;

   // execute operation
   switch(opCode)
   {
      case '+' : result = Plus     (a, b); break;
      case '-' : result = Minus    (a, b); break;
      case '*' : result = Multiply (a, b); break;
      case '/' : result = Divide   (a, b); break;
   }

   cout << "Switch: 2+5=" << result << endl;         // display result
}

// Solution with a function pointer - <pt2Func> is a function pointer and points to
// a function which takes two floats and returns a float. The function pointer
// "specifies" which operation shall be executed.
void Switch_With_Function_Pointer(float a, float b, float (*pt2Func)(float, float))
{
   float result = pt2Func(a, b);    // call using function pointer

   cout << "Switch replaced by function pointer: 2-5=";  // display result
   cout << result << endl;
}

// Execute example code
void Replace_A_Switch()
{
   cout << endl << "Executing function 'Replace_A_Switch'" << endl;

   Switch(2, 5, /* '+' specifies function 'Plus' to be executed */ '+');
   Switch_With_Function_Pointer(2, 5, /* pointer to function 'Minus' */ &Minus);
}